1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to medical imaging and, more particularly, to a system and method of processing medical images.
2. Description of the Background Art
Medical imaging is one of the most useful diagnostic tools available in modern medicine. Medical imaging allows medical personnel to non-intrusively look into a living body in order to detect and assess many types of injuries, diseases, conditions, etc. Medical imaging allows doctors and technicians to more easily and correctly make a diagnosis, decide on a treatment, prescribe medication, perform surgery or other treatments, etc.
There are medical imaging processes of many types and for many different purposes, situations, or uses. They commonly share the ability to create an image of a bodily region of a patient, and can do so non-invasively. Examples of some common medical imaging types are nuclear imaging, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound, X-rays, tomography of various types, etc. Using these or other imaging types and associated machines, an image or series of images may be captured. Other devices may then be used to process the image in some fashion. Finally, a doctor or technician may read the image in order to provide a diagnosis.
The image may capture various details of the subject, which may include bones, organs, tissues, ducts, blood vessels, nerves, previous surgical artifacts such as implants or scar tissue, etc. The image or images may be two-dimensional (i.e., planar) or three-dimensional. In addition, the image capture may produce an image sequence or video that shows live operation, such as a functioning organ, for example. An imaging machine may capture an image, manipulate it, process it in some fashion in order to improve the image, display it to a doctor or technician, and store it for later use.
Computerized image processing generally requires that the image data conform to some sort of protocol, with the protocol being a set of rules and standards that ensure that the information may be efficiently communicated and manipulated among different apparatus. The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard provides a well-defined and accepted data format and interaction protocol for communicating a processing medical image data, and is incorporated herein by reference. The DICOM standard is available from the Radiological Society of North America, Oak Brook, Ill. 60523-2251.
The DICOM standard has become popular for medical imaging because it ensures that conforming machines can operate on image data communicated from other conforming machines. Machines that may employ the DICOM standard may be workstations, CT scanners, MR images, film digitizers, shared archives (storage devices), printers, and other devices that may be used to process and store image and patient data.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional medical imaging system 100. The medical imaging system 100 may include an imager 107 and imager controller 106 (they may be an integrated device), a patient database 110, an output device 115, a scanner 117, and one or more workstations 122. The imager 107 and imager controller 106 capture an image or images of a patient. The imager 107 may be, for example, a gamma ray camera, an X-ray imager, a magnetic resonance imager (MRI), an ultrasound imager, etc. The patient database 110 may store patient information (i.e., a plurality of records containing a name, vital parameters, a doctor, medical conditions, etc.), and imaging data. The output device 115 may be, for example, a printer, a computer monitor or other display screen, a film developer, etc. The scanner 117 may be a scanning device that digitizes an image. The workstations 122 may be used to access the patient database 110 in order to add or retrieve data. Patient information might also be stored in local databases on the processing workstations. In that case, the patient database 110 acts as a data repository for storage. The various components may be connected by a distributed electronic network 103, such as, for example, a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), a virtual private network (VPN), or the Internet. The individual components may therefore be located in separate rooms, floors, buildings, or even separate hospitals, clinics or institutions (such as research centers that are not hospitals).
Computerized image processing is well known in the art. However, the need for computing power is ever increasing. For example, recent developments in tomographic reconstruction processes require more and more computing power to more accurately model the physics of image formation. Current processing software memory and processing power requirements may already exceed the specifications of the most powerful computers currently available on the market. As an example, in the field of SPECT imaging, the OSEM 3D reconstruction algorithm currently requires several hours of processing time to process a 256-cube volume, and is therefore not usable in a clinical practice. The processing power requirement is projected to only increase as scanners produce more and more data as resolution and speed increase, and as interest grows in obtaining full resolution co-registered or fused images from different modalities, such as SPECT-CT, PET-CT, SPECT-MRI, etc. Accordingly, there exists a present need in the art to reduce overall radiological image processing time.